LightLink enables enterprise blockchain adoption with gasless transactions

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have Roy H founder of light Link Roy welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time thank you for having me it's great to be talking to you today yeah I've seen light Link across the Twitter sphere uh saw the the main net is going crazy right now uh with the amount of transactions and adoption I'm

0:23excited to dive in with that uh with you today um but I'd love to start off our conversation first of all by learning a little bit more about your background in business and blockchain and how that led to founding light Link and then we can dive into all the latest details sure uh not a problem so um I've been a uh technology entrepreneur for the past 17

0:46years so a very long time building all kinds of different businesses uh have a bit of background in uh engineering computer science so I'm a technical co-founder um still try to develop from time to time getting to you know how code base but uh our Engineers largely tell me to stay out of it um I've uh built media companies uh video gaming communities and e-commerce companies in

1:11the past and that uh gave me a really good overall perspective of um how to do business across the world uh with an agile team um with a verifi performing uh engineering capability and also uh seeing things from many different perspectives not only from Pure web 3D gen L um but is also seeing um you know for a much wider adoption uh if we believe this to be the future of our

1:38financial industry of our Humanity of our digital infrastructure um how do we get there right um because we can't get there alone um ourselves we need the support of many large Industries um you know existing uh institutions for us to uh really be the future of all the things that we want to be very well said right and I love that you are a technical co-founder I feel

2:03like that's so important because especially when you're building an infrastructure as as as vast as light Link and and a protocol itself to support so many different applications and different Industries you need to understand the inner workings um so I would love to hear a little bit more about those inner workings of of light Link maybe just a high level overview of

2:23it and and the vision that you set out with your team when you started building it yeah uh certainly um we've been building in the blockchain space for the past six years uh under a Solutions business called p and um over the past uh since 2017 we've helped numerous businesses to build um onchain technology uh from asset organization to uh currency trading to you know nft

2:50projects and we saw the shortcomings of existing capabilities uh so for example we were meting uh thousands of nfts on ethereum uh for Australian open as example um we saw uh transaction fees skyrocketed because many people wanted to participate at the same time and the technology didn't have the capacity to cater for you know hundreds and thousands or thousands of users

3:15simultaneously and uh looking at the web 2 scalable um background that I had you know it was um quite amazing to see uh it's such an Innovative technology but it just didn't have the capacity to service um what could be useful so uh when we saw those shortcomings uh we decided to roll up our sleeves and you know just like all good Engineers do go back to our first principles and look at

3:43what does it look like if we build and try to um add scalability ourselves and uh that's essentially how lightling came to be we uh tried to build solutions to solve the problems that we saw in the industry predominantly scalability uh and predictability um when we talk to CEOs and CTO in the organization that we've had the opportunity to work with um they

4:07constantly struggle with gas fees um when you look at you know uh paying for a transaction madic or BMB or eth uh it's largely denominated in a native currency which uh fluctuates with speculation and um it's difficult for existing Industries existing businesses to grasp that concept you know they're used to um AWS GOOG Google Cloud mhm where uh they can pay um say you know a

4:34compute capability for a period of month and it's $500 you know it's predictable and if they did that for six months they know it's $3,000 so um in the crypto world if you have to prepaid transactions for your customers um you it's really hard to predict how much your infrastructure going to cost three months from now or 30 days from now so we try to solve that

4:56problem by adding the predictability cap capability on top of light Link and uh that's the Enterprise mode wow that's very interesting yeah I feel like there's a lot of major companies like that you that use case you mentioned with the Australian Open whether they're trying to Mint uh an nft or something on the blockchain as a part of their their new business plan and if it's on

5:20ethereum uh all of a sudden you know the price triples one day um that's I feel like large corporations need that predictability to be able to forecast months or years in in advance to to know what they're getting into U so that they don't you know all of a sudden end up spending way more than than they planned um and and and the same goes for those

5:40other chains that you mentioned yeah maybe the transaction fees are are lower on BNB or madic but if you have to hold that currency it still can be you know 20 to 30% swings in the market if you have a bunch of it uh in your wallet depending on where bitcoin's going um I feel like this is a a major problem that uh Enterprises or institutions that that

6:02are used to the predictability you know they don't love the volatility of crypto because they run a traditional business uh I feel like that's a major issue it would be great if they could pay with with stable coins or something predictable like like you're saying with light Link so how exactly does that work for bringing stability for businesses that are looking at implementing

6:25this yeah you're exactly right um so light Link offers two cast mod um the first is the public mode so it behaves just like many other public blockchains you deploy solidity contract you bridge over ether and you use the chain as you would um just like optimism arbitrum so on so forth now for Enterprise applications uh Enterprise customers can prepay gas uh for their uh

6:52customers so they would use light Link just like how they would use AWS they require capacity they purchase that capacity in Fiat uh in a stable coin and uh they are guaranteed to have that capacity um so we try to make a little bit easier for them to interact with the blockchain and when I spoke with you know early Enterprise adoption of blockchain uh in the past Cycles you

7:19know five or six years ago often the solution they were looking for to remove ethereum gas fees was just to have a private or permissioned blockchain that was not really decentralized it was corporate blockchain is that the case here or are you bringing a different solution where it's actually a public chain with that predictability yeah great question we have actually been

7:43building uh Enterprise blockchains for the past six years um and the issue with that is um these blockchains were isolated economies it didn't really operate interoperate with you know all the beautiful things that we see in the defi space you the nft space all the infrastructure that built by you know hundreds um of thousands of developers who are building on top of public

8:05network so light Link is a attempt also to address that um by firstly it's a public open permissionless network anybody can build on top of light Link and many people are and uh by uh activating Enterprise mode uh you're essentially toggling a smart contract from Gas pay to gasless transactions and uh that smart contract is on the same network um like uh many all the other

8:31smart contracts um they're inter uh interoperable they're composable um and they work with each other that's great to hear and with you and your team working directly W with Enterprises on adopting the technology I feel like there's a lot of people that at least the the crypto native people they're so excited to actually use this technology in the real world whether it's for the

8:53Australian Open as you mentioned or you know from Starbucks as as a part of their loyalty program or anything where there sort of nfts or crypto involved uh what would you say is like sort of the the level of adoption that we're at of you know uh interest from Enterprises bringing blockchain into everyday businesses that have millions of customers that maybe don't know anything

9:15about crypto or say it's Starbucks or something like that is there a lot of demand uh that for the Enterprises that you're working with or new ones that are reaching out yeah I think the last cycle we saw a tremendous uptake on interest um that fizzled out uh quite a bit in the bare Market um but um it we we've uh received tremendous amount of inbound uh requests

9:42in the last cycle um when we saw a large spotting events uh were getting you know experimenting this space um I think as uh the market heats up a bit more there will probably be bit more attention coming to the space and that attention will return so we've certainly seen the um decline of interest um but on on the other side I think this technology is

10:06out of the B right um other reserve banks in the world are experimenting with a digital currency or the larger um uh Consulting companies advertising companies agencies have a web three you know arm um attached to their previous offerings so yeah I think there's uh interest um and for that interest to fully realize its potential it really needs to infrastructure and that's what

10:31we've built you know over the U past couple of years uh we've tried to we solve the problem um and we try to build infrastructure where you know millions of people can come and interact with this new technology that's a great point and how important do you think is the the end user experience of uh making sure that you know the people don't have to learn

10:54about blockchain wallets or nfts how it functions just to get a ticket to a game for example is that something that you help the Enterprises with as well or do they have to at some point sort of meet you in the middle yeah I I think it's tremendously important right uh getting a user to download men mask uh store their seip prices securely um acquire a native

11:17token for the transaction to occur uh it's um tremendously difficult there's a huge barrier to entry and if we want the industry to grow uh we really need to improve the user experience and I think the current user experience isn't great so um when we work with larger companies um we try to advise on how can we improve that user experience and light

11:41Link uh is able to offer uh parts of that solution so for example gas abstraction is a key one um for a user to interact with that smart contract to um acquire a ticket for a sporting event to validate that ticket um when they enter a sporting event on the fight in real time it's just really difficult with uh many other public blockchains and uh on light Link it's a gasless

12:04experience and has the ability to cater for hundreds and thousands of users simultaneously uh in fact we're uh working with three different ticketing uh startups at the moment on realizing their uh ticketing ambition on top of light Link directly wow that's very cool and I was just going to ask that um I I know I've heard a lot around it and in fact I

12:25actually founded a a blockchain ticketing company albeit uh was in 2017 before nfts really even existed um and and we were just on the verge of implementing it as well um but I've been waiting for the moment where Ticket Master or some stadium that has 50 100,000 people uh all are getting nfts um how close do you think we are for major American stadiums to start

12:50implementing this to people that have no idea what crypto are they just want to go to the game yeah I I think that transition from um paper based Tech to digital Tech is largely simless right you might get a PDF it might be a QR code it might be you know delivered um through a type of encryption over certain you know communication protocol but a lot of that infrastructure is

13:15seamless and transparent to the user and I think uh blockchain the W should be um a infrastructure technology it is infrastructure technology it just has uh many other characteristics that uh in the previous generations that we haven't had like value um like encryption or um other really interesting attributes so I I think as a ticketing or consumer

13:38facing uh technology company you'll be you know uh investigating technology and experimenting with technology um I think Ticket Master has already implemented um parts of the technology on chain you know where hundreds of millions of tickets were generated using a digital Ledger of some kind um but whether uh if would be you know uh front and center uh

14:02you know I I'm not sure I I think um consumers users sports fans would just go to the uh event and see their ticket and uh and they go through the gates and it works you know that that's all they care about maybe after the um uh event uh that ticket will be turning into a digital collectible you know a souvenir um and then you can uh look at uh the souvenir uh to say I was at this event

14:29with my you know friends with my kids and I had a great time U maybe you can send those tickets or uh digital memorabilia to other people so that technology can be facilitated just like you said using nft but it might be largely transparent to the user that that's how I'm seeing things yeah no I think it's just the the crypto nerds that are that are geeking out over hey

14:51we made this technology work and of course there are many benefits uh to tokenizing it rather than just having a digital PDF um but uh all of that sort of subtly goes into to the value ad so I'm personally excited to to see that happen to mainstream events um and you know Roy as I mentioned at the beginning I was looking uh through the Twitter verse and I saw you know the main net

15:14for for light Link and there's like millions of transactions um and there's a lot happening a lot of growth maybe you can just talk about sort of the recent successes of the main net and where exactly your team is at with it yeah uh we launched our mainnet uh October last year um and boost dra using a Galaxy campaign uh asking users to come and participate

15:35and interact with uh various activities online um I think our ecosystem is still fairly young um there are uh still relatively little uh a lount of interactions that you can have as a in know crypto Dent um but we're working really hard with uh many developers um you know daps larger ecosystems to uh grow our um light Link ecosystem um so I would say gaming will probably be the um

16:07most uh utilized on our uh blockchain uh our team has created this abstraction layer called bolt where uh game studios game developers can essentially create onchain transactions with one API core and uh that largely uh solved a lot of their uh technical challenges of learning how to you know code solidity or uh you know dealing with onch transactions we essentially want to

16:32simplify that as much as possible and by simplifying it they use more of it um so we have games that's creating uh a record at the end of game completion like grapes for example and um creating a game like uh tally up or creating crypto assets um every time a transaction happen so um there are a lot of uh games that's utilizing technology because you offer that scalability um

16:58but it's no way U near as uh the amount of things that's about to come mhm no I'm super excited for for the web through gaming side and and the market size is huge uh you know half the world practically is playing either some kind of casual game or or hardcore gaming uh so uh when that technology hopefully light Link plays a large role in that uh bringing web3 blockchain in with gaming

17:25is is the perfect natural fit so I'm personally super excited for that yeah me too and and looking through the underlying technology uh I understand that light Link is evm compatible Layer Two so does that mean that if there are web 3 games that are already built or that are working on it or people already have daps on ethereum for example can they pivot the application to light Link to

17:54to save the gas costs or how easy is it to move existing infrastructure from from block other blockchains to light Link yeah um great great question um there are two answers to this uh firstly um light Link is evm equivalent uh so you can copy and paste your existing smart contract and uh Deploy on top a light Link with a different endpoint and that's it it uh we wanted to make it as

18:20seamless as possible as easy as possible to redeploy on light Link um and by being uh on top of uh light Link network uh you can have tremendously more capability and we have a fairly um interesting um ecosystem gr program incentives for developers to come in build on top of light Link um on the the other um thought that we had is you don't need to um go all in in one chain

18:50so for example if you already have a pfp on ethereum or polygon you can do scalable transactions on a different chain um purely because if the right now might be the chain with the most interoperability with the most liquidity with the most users um but it's very difficult for you to do leveling up information XP or unlocking achievements on top of etherum just doesn't make

19:12sense right so uh that architecture uh can be uh stretched over two chains one you have your you know pfp or your tokens and the other side you might have your gamification which is high velocity substantially more transactions and uh low latency low cost um so link would be a perfect candidate for that well that's great to hear and I also read something

19:36about the Celestia blockchain as part of the underlying technology maybe you can touch on on how that fits in and and why that's a good fit for light Link yeah um later to technology um span over a array of different uh Shades so uh you might have optimism that's uh implementing an optimistic rollup uh type technology where every single transaction is stored

20:02on layer one e theem itself and that type of Architecture is fairly costly because uh you require substantial block space on layer one and uh we all hope uh layer one can uh through various upgrades through uh for a 44 for example introduce more capacity on layer one but uh the amount of required space in my opinion is substantially greater than those that's profal layer one so on the

20:31other side you have a architecture like light Link it's called optimium and uh we store our data uh in a separate place and in this case it's Celestia and we would do all the calculations um on the blockchain and post proofs onto ethereum so instead of posting everything onto ethereum WE Post data the most expensive part of Celestia where data is a lot

20:55more cost effective and Celestia um holds that data secur secely and um it's decentralized um it's a lot more secure from the architectural perspective and we host uh we post the proofs onto ethereum itself it's just a different architecture and by implementing that architecture we can uh save out costs substantially and therefore pass on that cost-saving to our

21:20customers that's great to hear and thank you for explaining that I've seen so much on Celestia and I feel like it's a great addition uh it's and it's been really hot uh since since you guys launched in in uh the main net in in Q3 Q4 of last year it seems like it's only continuing to grow and help the blockchain ecosystem Al together so it's great to hear that light Link is also

21:41using Celestia um yeah I exactly had another question around Enterprises and the nft side you know from the perspective of what companies outside of blockchain see nfts or the word nft you know it can mean so much you know most people see it as Graphics or profile picture or a representation of something that's tokenized do you think that there's a a

22:08negative or positive perspective when when Enterprises are looking to hey we want to implement blockchain versus we want to implement nfts um is there like a hurdle to jump over still to for people to understand truly what that can mean for the company yeah uh there definitely is uh but before jumping to that I just wanted to underline um we are uh the most

22:34heaviest user of cestia on um Coker testnet I think we use like 21% of the entire cesary capacity um and that architecture change would be rolling to mainnet uh relatively soon I think in the coming weeks so it'd be interesting to see how we actually how much we actually use in mainnet uh C this year um it uh I wouldn't be surprised if for like the top uh chain that's using the

23:00capacity wow congratulations uh that flows really nicely to the next question which is you know uh Enterprise sentiment I think um because value um being usdt or ether uh being the native um layer uh of this technology uh it has attracted a lot of you know scammers or um you know not so fundamental projects um and that um really uh shown away the Enterprise

23:31adoption as uh much as we like you know um in the bull cycle um occasionally you will get uh news articles talking about how um this industry is full of you know scams and that uh sentiment certainly is carried out in um in other uh conversations that we've had from Business Development perspective now I think in the early days of Internet uh in the early days of you know uh other

23:59forms of media or technology uh we've seen similar things um but as a um technology uh adopting Enterprise customer I think if you're able to see past that and understand this is a technology it's a you know asymmetric encryption it's a decentralized computation platform um it's a uh smart Contracting layer it's a highly available you know uh capability right

24:26so if you see the technology for what it is um you passed um the negative short-term sentiments and uh I think um if we uh as as a blockchain industry uh if we want to grow we really need to welcome uh the world to come and participate and I think uh as we're seeing more and more adoption of Technology whether if it's musicians or

24:53artists or sporting events uh inly adds that extra level of legitimacy and validations to the technology and I think you know we we're mostly there you know comparing to six years ago five six years ago when you started I think the industry is still you know very uncertain um unestablished right but now uh when we talk about blockchain tech I think most people would recognize it's a

25:16technology it's a technology that has gone through its uh growing phase and it's here to stay yeah no that's a great point and I think especially on the tickets you know with traditional tickets there have been especially with popular events there are a lot of scams or fake tickets in in traditional events so if anything um it can stop that scamming and sort of like uh play to the

25:41opposite of hey you know this isn't a scam it's actually preventing scams I think that's um once we see that adoption that people understand that the ticket is safer on these blockchain ticketed events um hopefully that spreads the the word to Mo you know Enterprises and and large corporations in in all Industries yeah yeah I completely agree uh it actually opens up

26:04new business models right because for um companies businesses to adopt this technology there has to be a commercial reason for them to ticking is a great example uh secondary sales uh resellers of Technology of tickets um it's very difficult for the artists for the venue for the uh ticket providers to capture that secondary Revenue where blockchain as an nft you can uh use because there's

26:29only one smart contract there's only one you know type of tickets um you can bake in the smart contract every time a transaction happens a royalty is paid to the organization so it creates a new form of Revenue um which might be very welcoming to uh established businesses great point and what else I'm curious for the future Roy what else are is in the the road map you know the main

26:55Nets super successful you're gaining more Enterprises uh in interested in in joining the chain you know what is part of the road map for you know the rest of 2024 moving into next year yeah um we firstly from a technical perspective would like uh to uh keep on iterating innovating and building uh in this space um so our new um architecture change from um where we are to um a release

27:23called hummingbird would be uh launched in a couple of weeks and uh that would underline the cester utilization that I was talking about earlier um and to build on top of that we would like um everybody to contribute to our network uh security and decentralization so we'll be offering um validator nodes as a capability for people to run uh to uh Ure uh all the transactions are

27:50processed correctly securely and it matches the proofs that we post on uh later one so U that note uh would be available uh in a couple of months from now and uh we also need to do what we said we would do and there will be lots of really interesting use um in the pipeline to talk about the web two uh Enterprise applications and Partnerships that we have

28:13formed very cool and I can imagine that enterprises working with lightlink would want to run validator nodes and and and be contributing to the network but from what I understand anybody can uh contribute to becoming a validator would that re require like getting the the light Link uh governance token and staking it or you know how can people well learn more about it and contribute

28:38to that when it becomes available uh yeah there will be uh some kind of incentives uh baking to this capability and therefore you know you're incentivized to run this uh infrastructure uh software capability right so uh yeah um light Link token would be a part of this equation uh it's a governance token but it's also used to um reward pity spening the

29:03network uh to learn more uh follow us on uh light Link uh on Twitter as well as you know on our website we'll have plenty more information coming through sounds great right I can add that into the show notes and I'm personally excited and interested for when that launches and the hummingbird upgrade sounds pretty cool as well uh so I'm definitely going to be following along

29:24uh with your team's initiatives and please solve you know nft Enterprise adoption uh so we can have nfts in all of these large corporations uh when we're buying coffee buying flight tickets buying tickets for an event um that would be something that as a crypto nerd I would love to see uh adopted into the mainstream so I really do appreciate your time uh and and I'm wishing you

29:47guys all the best and success in uh implementing this into uh into the greater world so people can actually reap the benefits of blockchain and tokenization yeah EX exactly thanks Ashton um thanks for all those kind words and we're certainly trying and watch us build